


The Kids are Alright

by 221b_hound



Series: Guitar Man [112]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Attempted Kidnapping, Birthday Party, Games, Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Parentlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-10 22:37:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7863895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Violet's favourite birthday party ever was her thirteenth, when an idiot (another one!) tried to kidnap Ford. Seriously. Does he even know whose kids these are?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Kids are Alright

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Veshke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veshke/gifts).



> I've been inspired to write a little more Guitar Man fic lately, from all the notes I have in my folder - partly to fulfill more of the Million Word Festival Prompts.

Violet Morstan Watson had many memorable birthdays throughout her life. Some of them were spent in jungles, some in alpine villages. Once she earned her medical degree and began her internship on the Mars station, she spent one slightly frightening birthday stuck in a broken down personnel carrier in the Victoria crater hoping that someone would reach her before the air ran out. (They did, with hours to spare, so it wasn't as dramatic as all that.)  
  
But one of her favourite birthdays was her thirteenth, spent in Holland Park. There were several reasons for the shining memories. First of all, everyone, and she means _everyone_ , was there. Ford and Chloe, Chris and David, and Nicola and Teresa. Sherlock and Daddy and Rupe and Mummy. Uncles Mycroft, Greg and Tad and Aunts Sally, Molly and Charlotte, and some of those superficially dull men in suits and hard faces who she liked to make smile, and almost always did.  
  
And then there were the games.  Like the one where Sherlock tied up all the kids except Teresa - in very simple knots, really - and the first person to untie themselves won a prize (a chocolate skull!). Ford was especially good at that one usually, but Chris and David sort-of-cheated by helping each other escape and then going around tickling everyone who was still tied up. Ford got free next, then Violet, and they made the twins stop by stealth-tickling them until everyone was out of the ropes and sitting on them, tickling them into submission.

They played Potions (and Sherlock got in trouble from the Park People for that, despite the fact that the ingredients were all Nirupa’s doing) to see who could make the most interesting one. Chloe made a concoction that fizzed all over everything and turned Chris's hands blue for a week, which was _brilliant_. Nirupa taught them all the kite game from Afghanistan, where the aim was to use your glass-encrusted kite string to amputate your opponent’s strings and be the last kite standing. Nobody had expected Nicola to be such a champion of that game.  
  
Then some idiot tried to kidnap Ford.  
  
The thing is that kids can get scared and confused, sure. But _these_ kids were never _ordinary_ kids. These kids grew up being challenged to their limits. They knew self-defence, and not just the pretty, neat kind. Mycroft and Sherlock were well aware of the kind of enemies they had, so they taught the children in their lives to fight dirty, to leave clues, to get away and _run_.  
  
More particularly, Ford and Violet were not quite like other children. Sherrinford Holmes had a tendency to see more than he should, to think faster than people thought he could. And Violet Morstan Watson had inherited her father's tendency to be extremely cool in a crisis, and her mother's tendency to be very, very vocal.

And lastly – well, nobody realised _exactly_ what was going on until later.

So at Holland Park, where they’d all been having a lovely picnic, the children became their own first line of defence when a poorly informed assailant – who had disbelieved certain tales told by an Australian thug-turned-mechanic – decided to snatch-and-grab a small and slender boy to use as leverage against his parents.

 _Idiot_ , like Violet said.

Violet never knew what this awful man planned to do once he had Ford, but the bastard was wily enough to appear innocuous until the last minute, when he slid past one of Uncle Mycroft's Men in Black and grabbed at Ford. She remembered everything after that point though.  
  
Ford first became a dead weight and then, when the idiot thought this was going to be easy, Ford fought like a tiger: that is, with tooth and claw. Blood was drawn from the vicious bite to the man’s fingers and the scratches down his face starting at his eye and raking down his big nose. Twelve-year-old Ford found that very satisfactory.

Violet jumped onto the idiot's back, leaned close to his ears and screamed as loudly as she could _straight into his ear._ No blood resulted, but the idiot yelped and flinched and let go of Ford. Violet found _that_ very satisfactory.

Once unhanded, Ford did as his parents had taught him to do: he banged his cupped palms as hard as he could on either side of the idiot's head, hurting his already ringing ears. Then Ford grabbed Violet’s hand and would have run, as they’d been taught to do, except it became much more interesting to _watch_.

That’s because Chris and David had picked up the ropes so recently used for the escapology game and swooped at the idiot's ankles. Ears ringing in pain, which affected his balance momentarily, the idiot tripped on the rope and face-planted in the grass.

Chloe and Nicola had seized upon the little cocktail forks they’d been using to eat cake, and with matching squeals of outrage they set about stabbing the idiot's arse and thighs, shrieking their fury all the while. The idiot might have just wriggled away from that one, but Chloe caught sight of exposed bum crack, let loose with a blood-curdling war cry and plunged her dainty fork into the offered flesh. Hysterical failed-kidnapper screeches were drawn, and blood, especially when eight-year-old Nicola figured a follow-through strike was necessary. Nicola had very good aim and a strong right arm for someone so young.

Teresa, who at six was really a bit young for all of this, but who didn't want to be left out, reached the idiot as he rolled around, howling and clutching his bum, and she pushed a bit of birthday cake right into his eyes, because the main thing she remembered Chloe and Nicola telling her about their self-defence sessions was _go for the eyes_.

“Bad man!” Teresa yelled at the bad man, and then she ran away to find her sister. __  
  
In the thirty-seven seconds it took these kids to fell the idiot, the adults – and the security detail bristling guns and embarrassment – had converged on the melee.  
  
The idiot was back on his belly in the dirt, blinded by cake and arse bleeding from fork-related wounds, and now with mouth full of grass.

Violet was kicking him in the ribs and yelling, “You keep your hands off Sherry, you rat-faced slimebuckety turdbrain!”

Ford had crouched down in front of the idiot and was also speaking, his voice thrumming with hyperactive energy. “…and you missed a bit shaving this morning  because you’re worried about money, you’ve had your shoes fixed twice and if you bothered to spend more money in the first place you wouldn’t need to do it again and you’ve got halitosis and that’s not even the only reason your wife left you…”

Nicola and Teresa had started crying and were clinging to each other while Chloe insisted that someone find an orange shock blanket for them.

Chris and David had striped their faces in cake and jam were doing a war dance.  
  
The Men in Black rescued the grateful idiot from the enraged collection of kids – well, he was grateful until he caught the look on the adults’ faces. All that icy fury was a lot like a body blow, and he flinched. As well he might.

Nicola and Teresa (and their mum Charlotte, come to that) were calmed down with cuddles and replacement cake – which turned out to be the primary cause of Teresa’s distress. None of the kids seemed to realise how serious it had all been. Even Ford had thought it was a bit of a training exercise.

It was years before Violet discovered the whole thing hadn’t been another game Sherlock had cooked up to entertain her for her birthday.

*

“Oh god no,” John had confessed to her on her 30th birthday, at Angelo’s with Ford, their son, and her collection of parents for dinner. “Mycroft fired two of his detail for letting that bastard through. We decided at the time it was best to let you all think it was one of the games, but it absolutely wasn’t.  It was just as well that idiot got dragged away when he did. Sherlock and Mycroft were about to break each of his bones in turn, with Sally keeping count I expect…”

“…and you naming them,” interrupted Mary fondly. John flashed her a not-quite-guilty look and went on.

“…only Chris and David started laughing about what a great party game it was. You and Ford looked like that was a revelation, then high fived each other for excellent reflexes. Chloe and Tad’s girls started laughing again too. So yeah. We thought it best to play along for a while.”

“You must have been absolutely beside yourselves!” Violet realised, watching Ford bouncing their little boy Hamish on his knee. If anyone ever tried anything like that on Hamish, she’d name the breaking bones herself.

John started to laugh. Mary, Nirupa and Sherlock, all gathered around the restaurant table, exchanged glances and grinned.

“Sweetheart,” confessed Mary, “None of us knew whether to be terribly proud or absolutely horrified by our clever little savages.”

“I knew,” said Sherlock firmly. And he beamed at her. _Proudly._

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the song by The Who.
> 
> Veshke asked for a Guitar Man story about the kids during the Million Word Festival - sorry it's taken so long to write!


End file.
